"I had a receiver inside rerouting," the cornerback said. "I saw a crossing route coming across. I saw a quarterback staring down. The D-line, they gave a lot of pressure and caused him to just throw the ball. I wanted to take it to the house."

He nearly did. Midway through the second quarter of Southern Miss' 40-22 win over Rice on Saturday, Mitchell intercepted Rice quarterback Shawn Stankavage just in front of midfield, returning it 45 yards. Had he returned it 46 yards, he would've had a touchdown. But Southern Miss had to settle for a ball at the 1-yard line, handing it to running back Steven Anderson one play later for the first touchdown of his career.

Plays like this have propelled the Southern Miss defense all season. Three games into the 2018 season, USM's defense has forced six turnovers — five interceptions and one fumble recovery. Two of those interceptions came Saturday against Rice, with Mitchell's pick following four drives after Ty Williams' interception.

In both cases Saturday, Southern Miss' offense followed interceptions with touchdowns one play later.

"The Nasty Bunch prides itself on that," Southern Miss coach Jay Hopson said. "We want to create turnovers. We want to be physical. We want to be a physical defensive unit. Definitely today I felt like the strength of it was we created turnovers and we gave our offense plus-yardage field position."

As a whole, USM's defense was pretty dominant regardless of the turnovers Saturday. The Golden Eagles forced Rice into four three-and-outs and limited Stankavage to 4.8 yards per pass attempt. But the turnovers really catalyzed Southern Miss' day.

Between Williams' and Mitchell's returns, Southern Miss' defense gave the offense 56 extra yards of field position, setting up the two immediate scores. According to senior linebacker Jeremy Sangster, the coaches have instilled this sort of opportunistic attitude into the defense since the start of camp. Sangster said defensive coordinator Tim Billings preaches a "plus one" mentality in practice, meaning if the defense forces one turnover on Monday, it has to force two on Tuesday and three on Wednesday. Plus one every day.

Well, the USM defense came away with one interception last game. Plus one.

"Ty was the first one then [Rachaun] caught the other one," Sangster said. "That changed the whole momentum. Once we caught that, we were ginning. We were ready to go."